Michigan coach John Beilein hoists the net that was cut down during the Wolverines' celebration of their Final Four berth Sunday. / Julian H. Gonzalez/Detroit Free Press

Son Patrick Beilein

ARLINGTON, Texas -- When Michigan coach John Beilein rolls into Atlanta this week for the Final Four, he'll have tunnel vision.

It's a look he has had before, in that city for that event.

Six years ago, Beilein stood in a conference room at the hotel, giving a clinic talk about coaching and his style, light on details but heavy on direction.

He certainly was tired, his eyes and face showing the rush from New York City, where his West Virginia team had just won the NIT. The room had none of the heavy hitters, just a bunch of young coaches from high school and lower college levels.

Once he finished, Beilein left the room on, well, a beeline, to his next stop, his mind was many miles away. A few coaches said thank-you, but then he was stopped dead in his tracks and asked a question.

"What about Michigan?" He froze. Beilein was meeting with then-Michigan athletic director Bill Martin to discuss the U-M vacancy -- a dinner so clandestine one of his roommates that weekend, son Patrick, wasn't told -- but he was sure no one knew what was coming.

He was given an escape hatch from the conversation after he caught himself, promising he would talk about "whatever whenever he could," but couldn't contain a little smile.

Less than a week later, he was in Ann Arbor accepting the job. He hadn't seen U-M's dilapidated facilities, comparable to what he was leaving in West Virginia.

His vision of Michigan was firm, though. He recalled the Wolverines playing in the first Final Fours he attended as a Division I coach -- in 1992 and 1993 -- and that impression remained vivid.

Back then, he never imagined he would be the next coach to take U-M to the Final Four 20 years later.

But for his own journey, that started earlier.

He wanted to go to the Albuquerque Final Four in 1983 as a Division II coach at Le Moyne College, but his first child, Patrick, was due that weekend, so he stayed home.

The next year in Seattle in 1984, son Mark was on his way and his wife, Kathleen, wasn't allowed to fly. So his first Final Four that year he attended "by myself," which might have been for the best.

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"It was the most incredible experience of my life," Beilein said Sunday after Michigan's 79-59 Elite Eight win over Florida. "I went to every shoot-around, I sat there and wrote postcards to all my brothers and sisters. I thought, I love this, and I'm going to get here someday."

Kathleen finally made her first Final Four appearance in 1986.

"It was right here in Dallas," she said on the court Sunday. "The (seats) were pretty far away, but we had a big dream."

Even watching the games, a pair of thousands in the stands, they said to each other: "That could be us someday."

Like a Hollywood tourist, he walked the streets hoping to see "any big-time coach just to hear these guys talking."

The Final Four was a fixation. And Beilein badly wanted to make it to one as a coach.

It almost came in 2005 when coaching Patrick and West Virginia. They had a huge lead on Louisville in the regional final -- until it vanished in a collapse punctuated by a heartbreaking overtime.

Every Beilein in Cowboys Stadium and upstate New York had the same thought Sunday.

"I looked up at the scoreboard today and we were up 24 at one point, and I was like, 'Oh, my God,' " Beilein's youngest son, Andy, said. "I might have been more nervous than I would have been if it was a one- or two-point game at the buzzer."

For Patrick, who was on the floor in that 2005 game, this time was more helpless.

"I was thinking of our Louisville game the whole time with a similar type of lead," said Patrick, who just finished his first year as West Virginia Wesleyan's head coach. "But I knew this team was different. My dad deserved this."

In 1984, it was a dream. In 2005, it was a nightmare. By 2007, when he ended up at his destination job, the only Division I job he would keep through to a sixth year, it was reality.

"That's part of the journey when you become a coach, and that's your goal," Kathleen said. "I don't think we knew when it was going to happen, but we knew it was going to happen."